RE: Why the Whale War might be good for Steemit
Thanks for the explanation.
It sounds like the common element in all your reasoning is that you don't trust stakeholders to act in ways that support growth. This is a legitimate problem, but nerfing stakepower won't solve it. It's not just large stakeholders who try to abuse the network for profit, and as long as it remains profitable we'll see an increasing number of people taking that approach.
To solve the problem we can either try to fork the network removing the stake of large abusive stakeholders until the network is controlled by only the most angelic among us (unlikely), or we can modify the economics to make abuse unprofitable. I'm promoting the second approach. All stakeholders hold stake, which means they're united in the positive-sum benefit that comes from long term network growth. The problem is that they're divided by the short term zero-sum competition for rewards. To make the network healthy we need to make that zero-sum competition less appealing/profitable and the positive sum collaboration relatively more appealing.
Hey @troglodactyl I really enjoyed reading your reply, thanks. You got a genuine lol with the 'most angelic' line : )
I needed to look up nerfing and it seems to me that buffing the available weapons is not desirable ether.
I have spent most of my time here observing. I suspect that their is already a financial incentive for promoting flag wars. imho we need access to information already contained in the blockchain to ether invalidate or validate this suspicion. I am computer illiterate and have no clue how to build the necessary tools.
Modifying the economics may be a positive. However rewarding flag wars would definitely propel us in the opposite direction. Right now some people are being easily psychologically manipulated into engage in flag wars that have all the integrity and validity of a witch hunt. Rewarding that will be disastrous.
The political process for changing the rules needs to modified into a system of open democracy where everyone interested is able to easily see how previous decisions have been arrived at and anyone who wants to have a say regarding proposed changes have that opportunity.
Right now a few whales literally own witnesses. This must change.
oh @troglodactyl I neglected to address your opening line directly.
'your reasoning is that you don't trust stakeholders to act in ways that support growth'
I object to being placed in a situation where I need to trust. If people are being transparent I do not need to trust them, because I know what is happening. When people are making secret deals with one another in private, they are doing that for a reason, so why would anyone trust that?
Networks and societies always require trust, it's just a matter of how much we can distribute and manage that trust to make sure the costs of being untrustworthy are high and the rewards of being trustworthy are attractive. We obviously want to avoid having to trust people to act in our interests at the cost of their own.
hey @troglodactyl thanks for replies. I really appreciate your approach. I like this sentence ' We obviously want to avoid having to trust people to act in our interests at the cost of their own.'
imho The way the rules are changed and the way decisions are made right now is putting people in a position of needing to trust that process.
And I would like to see a more open and transparent process where anyone interested can participate.